But Death's caprices
baffled even her. He seemed now so pitiless and unlovely of heart; and
now, as if possessed, passionate and swift; and now would break away
burning from her arms in an infinite tenderness.
But best she loved them when there came a transient peace to both; and
looking upon them laid embraced in the shadow-casting moonbeam, not
even she could undoubtingly touch the brow of each beneath their
likened hair, and say this is the elder, and this the dreamless
younger of the boys.
Seeing, too, my eyes cast upon the undecipherable letters of the tomb
by which we sat, she told me how that once, near before dawn, she had
awoke in the twilight to find their places empty where the children
had lain at her side, and had sought on, at last to find them even
here, weeping and quarrelling, and red with anger. Little by little,
and with many tears, she had gleaned the cause of their quarrel--how
that, like very children, they had run a race at cockcrow, and all
these stones and the slender bones and ashes beneath to be the prize;
and how that, running, both had come together to the goal set, and
both had claimed the victory.
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